The UN agreed an interim nuclear inspection regime with Iran, but warned: “We will have less access, we must be fair”

Iran and the IAEA, the UN’s nuclear agency, agreed on a new verification regime on Sunday, more limited and for a period of three months, to monitor the Persian nuclear program ahead of the suspension of cooperation announced by Tehran for next week.

This was announced by the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, on his return to Vienna from a two-day visit to Tehran, where he met with Iran’s top nuclear negotiators. “We will have less access (than we have so far), we have to be fair, but we will be able to maintain the necessary level of supervision and verification”Grossi said in statements to the press at the airport in the Austrian capital.

Hours earlier, Iranian authorities said they had “fruitful discussions” with the head of the UN nuclear agency, which arrived in the Iranian capital on Saturday, where he met the president of the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency on Sunday. Ali Akbar Salehi, and with the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

The tension surrounding Iran’s nuclear program and its verification by the IAEA is due to on an Iranian law that will enter into force on Tuesday, which provides for a suspension of the application of the so-called “additional protocol” of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) if the United States doesn’t lift its sanctions against the country. That protocol allows IAEA inspectors to visit and examine any facility in Iran, both civil and military, without prior notice.

It is an important measure of the 2015 nuclear agreement, which was then signed by Iran and the so-called 5 + 1 group (the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia and China), to exchange the Iranian nuclear program. for lifting sanctions.

Former US President Donald Trump left the agreement in May 2018, and the Iranian regime a year later began to gradually break through its essential elements, in particular the level of uranium enrichment (20%).

Grossi stressed this Sunday that “the law exists and will be implemented,” whatever that means “The additional protocol is suspended.” “However, we agreed a specific bilateral agreement to bridge that period as best as possible without losing the necessary verification capacity,” the CEO summarized.

In this regard, Grossi expressed hope that the United States and Iran can reach an agreement in the near future so that both sides can fully comply with the 2015 agreement known as JCPOA for the acronym in English.

The President of the United States, the Democrat Joe Biden, did not rule out the country returning to the agreement, but demanded it first Iran to comply with all rules again.

The Islamic Republic, for its part, says it will not continue its JCPOA violations until Washington lifts its sanctions, particularly the oil embargo that has hit its economy hard.

Last Thursday, The United States has accepted the invitation from Europeans to participate in discussions to relaunch the 2015 agreement. But the next day, Biden urged European powers to work with Washington to respond Iran’s “destabilizing activities” in the Middle East.

Faced with ongoing charges by Western powers, the Islamic Republic has always denied that it intended to possess nuclear weapons. The 2015 international agreement provided for the lifting of sanctions in exchange for Iran giving up the atomic bomb.

Despite the Persian regime’s denials, the latest violations of the agreement have alerted the international community. Last week, the IAEA reported that Tehran began producing uranium metal. On February 8, the UN agency verified “3.6 grams of uranium metal at the plant in Isfahan” (in midland). The issue is sensitive because uranium metal can be used to make nuclear weapons.

The nuclear deal includes a 15-year ban on “the production or acquisition of plutonium or uranium metals and their alloys.” In addition, the pact stipulates that after 10 years, Iran can begin to explore the production of uranium fuel “in small quantities”, but only with the consent of the other signatories.

With information from EFE

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